Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Workout Wednesday: Tabata Intervals

It's late. And I want to go to bed. But I also really want to write this blog. So it'll be a quick one, I hope.

If you haven't already been introduced, I wanted you to meet Tabata. I met Tabata about two summers ago. I've seen it since on exercise blogs (including the one I use daily), and in my Fitness magazine.

Tabata is a great short workout, or a great addition to any existing workout you might do.

It's simple, really.

It's 4 minutes of exercises, with patterns of 20 seconds of work, and 10 seconds of rest.

Here's a video to explain it. Watching this was the first time I learned about it.

My favorite thing about these intervals is that you can switch the 20 seconds of work to any form of cardio. Jumping jacks, plank jacks, burpees, mountain climbers, high knees, butt kickers, skaters, jump rope, and the list goes on.

Today I did my three sets of exercises as prescribed at http://hiitmamas.blogspot.com/. But as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I tend to add cardio/running to these workouts if I need to. So before each set, I did a 4 minute Tabata round.